Brent started to push his way through, but a hand touched his arm and a familiar voice whispered, “Ach-tung! Ou vkhodit.”
He interpreted the warning and let the Venusian draw him aside. Nikobat rapidly explained.
“The Stappers came and subdued the whole crowd with paralyzing rods. They took them away—God knows what they’ll do with them. There’s no one in there now; the fire’s just a gesture.”
“But you— How did you—”
“My nerve centers don’t react the same. I lay doggo and got away. Mimi escaped, too; her armor has deflecting power. I think she’s gone to warn the Underground.”
“Then come on.”
“Don’t stay too close to me,” Nikobat warned. “They’ll recognize me as a traveler; stay out of range of rods aimed at me. And here. I took these from a Stapper I strangled. This one is a paralyzing rod; the other’s an annihilator.”
The next half-hour was a nightmare—a montage of flames and blood and sweating bodies of hate. The Stasis of Stupidity was becoming a Stasis of Cruelty. Twice groups of citizens stopped Brent. They were unarmed; Bokor wisely kept weapons to himself, knowing that the fangs and claws of an enraged mob are enough. The first group Brent left paralyzed. The second time he confused his weapons. He had not meant to kill.
He did not confuse his weapons when he bagged a brace of Bokors. But what did the destruction of two matter? He fought his way on, finally catching up with Nikobat at their goal. As they met, the voice boomed once more from the air. “Important! New Chief of Stappers announces that officers of Chief of Stappers and Head of State be henceforth maked one. Under new control, travelers will be wiped out and Stasis preserved. Then on to South America for glory of Cosmos!”
Brent shuddered. “And we started out so beautifully on our renaissance!”
Nikobat shook his head. “But the bodiless traveler said that Stephen was to destroy the Stasis. This multiple villain cannot change what has happened.”
“Can’t he? We’re taking no chances.”
The headquarters of the Underground was inappositely in a loft. The situation helped. The trap entrance was unnoticeable from below and had gone unheeded by the mobs. Brent delivered the proper raps, and the trap slid open and dropped a ladder. Quickly they mounted.
The loft was a sick bay. A half-dozen wounded members of Stephen’s group lay groaning on the floor. With them was Kruj. Somewhere the little man had evaded the direct line of an annihilator, but lost his hand. Blood was seeping out of his bandages, and Mimi, surprisingly feminine and un-Amazonic, held his unconscious head in her lap.
“You don’t seem to need warning,” Brent observed.
Stephen shook his head. “We be trapped here. Here we be safe for at littlest small while. If we go out—”
Brent handed him his rods. “You’re the man we’ve got to save, Stephen. You know what Sirdam’s said—it all depends on you. Use these to protect yourself, and we’ll make a dash for it. If we can lose ourselves in the mob as ordinary citizens, there’s a chance of getting away with it. Or” —he turned to Martha-Sirdam—”have you any ideas?”
“Yes. But only as last resort.”
Nikobat was peering out the window. “It’s the last resort now,” he said. “There’s a good fifty of those identical Stappers outside, and they’re headed here. They act as though they know what this is.”
Brent was looking at Stephen, and he saw a strange thing. Stephen’s face was expressionless, but somewhere behind his eyes Brent seemed to sense a struggle. Stephen’s body trembled with an effort of will; and then his eyes were clear again. “No,” he said distinctly. “You do not need to control me. I understand. You be right. I will do as you say.” And he lifted the annihilator rod.
Brent started forward, but his muscles did not respond to his commands. Force his will though he might, he stood still. It was the bodiless traveler who held him motionless to watch Stephen place the rod to his temple.
“This bees goodest thing that I can do for mans,” said Stephen simply. Then his headless corpse thumped on the floor.
Brent was released. He dashed forward, but vainly. There was nothing men could do for Stephen now. Brent let out a choking gasp of pain and sorrow.
Then the astonished cries of the Undergrounders recalled him from his friend’s body. He looked about him. Where was Nikobat? Where were Kruj and Mimi?
A small inkling of the truth began to reach him. He hurried to the window and looked out.
There were no Bokors before the house. Only a few citizens staring dazedly at a wide space of emptiness.
At that moment the loud-speaker sounded. “Announcement,” a shocked voice trembled. “Chief of Stappers haves just disappeared.” And in a moment it added, “Guards report all travelers have vanished.”
The citizens before the house were rubbing their eyes like men coming out of a nightmare.
“But don’t you see, madam— No? Well, let me try again.” Brent was not finding it easy to explain her brother’s heroic death to an untenanted Martha. “Remember what your inhabitant told us? The Stasis was overthrown by Stephen.”
“But Stephen bees dead.”
“Exactly. So listen: All these travelers came from a future wherein Stephen had overthrown the Stasis so that when Stephen destroyed himself, as Sirdam realized, he likewise destroyed that future. A world in which Stephen died unsuccessful is a world that cannot be entered by anyone from the other future. Their worlds vanished and they with them. It was the only way of abolishing the menace of the incredibly multiplied Bokor.”
“Stephen bees dead. He cans not overthrow Stasis now.”
“My dear madam— Hell, skip it. But the Stasis is damned nonetheless in this new world created by Stephen’s death. I’ve been doing a little galping on my own. The people are convinced now that the many exemplars of Bokor were some kind of evil invader. They rebound easy, the hordes; they dread the memory of those men and they dread also the ideas of cruelty and conquest to which the Bokors had so nearly converted them.
“But one thing they can’t rebound from is the doubts and the new awarenesses that we planted in their minds. And there’s what’s left of your movement to go on with. No, the Stasis is damned, even if they are going to erect yet another Barrier.”
“Oh,” Martha shuddered. “You willn’t let them.”
Brent grinned. “Madam, there’s damned little letting I can do. They’re going to, and that’s that. Because, you see, all the travelers vanished.”
“But why—”
Brent shrugged and gave up. “Join me in some bond?” It was clear enough. The point of time which the second Barrier blocked existed both in the past of the worlds of Nikobat and Sirdam, and in the past of this future they were now entering. But if this future road stretched clear ahead, then travelers—a different set from a different future, but travelers nonetheless—would have appeared at the roadblock. The vanishing Bokors and Nikobat and the rest would have been replaced by another set of stranded travelers.
But no one, in this alternate unknown to Sirdam in which Stephen died a failure, had come down the road of the future. There was a roadblock ahead. The Stasis would erect another Barrier ... and God grant that some scientific successor to Alex would create again the means of disrupting it. And the travelers from this coming future—would they be Sirdams to counsel and guide man, or Bokors to corrupt and debase him?
Brent lifted his glass of bond. “To the moment after the next Barrier!” he said.
SURFACE TENSION
By James Blish